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Chicken Curry with Rice

A savory chicken curry simmered with coconut milk, lemon, and Indian curry powder, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and chicken match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Chicken Curry with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Fry the salt pork slices until crisp.

  2. In the same fat, fry the onions until brown.

  3. Add the chicken broth and cold chicken pieces to the pan.

Make the coconut milk

  1. Grate the coconut.

  2. Pound the remaining coconut in a mortar.

  3. Squeeze the pounded coconut with water to extract milk.

  4. Add the coconut milk to the grated coconut.

  5. Mix into the frying pan.

Finish and simmer

  1. Mix the curry powder and cornstarch with a little cold broth.

  2. Add the mixture to the pan.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice, grated rind, and butter.

  4. Let it simmer for 3 hours.

  5. Add hot water if it boils away too much.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pork + chickentop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Chicken + coconuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together808 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender during the long simmer.
Onions
Caramelised by frying, they add sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Coconut
Grated and pressed with water, it supplies rich milk that gives the sauce body and sweetness.
Curry powder
Releases aromatic spices into the sauce, giving it its characteristic flavour.
Cornstarch
Thickens the liquid so the curry becomes a cohesive sauce rather than thin broth.
Salt pork
Its rendered fat carries flavour into the onions and the rest of the dish.

The step that matters

Thickening the curry powder mixture. Cornstarch must be mixed with cold liquid before it goes into the hot pan, otherwise it clumps. Stirring it in smoothly and keeping the sauce simmering lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the curry.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, onion, chicken, coconut, egg, butter):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Pineapplefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, chicken, coconut, egg, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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